“I remembered when he'd explained the concept of infinity to me. Immeasurable, one moment stretching out to the next.”

“The brief walk--from the screened-in porch outside to the Hearse--was one of those moments he knew he'd remember and look back on, one of those moments that he'd try to capture in the stories he told. Nothing was happening, really, but the moment was thick with mattering.”

“Do you remember infinity?”Slowly, I turned around. “What about it?”Tossing something toward me, he said, “Catch.”I reached out and caught it in the air. A silver necklace. I held it up and examined it. The infinity necklace.It didn’t shine the way it used to; it looked a bit coppery now. But I recognized it. Of course I recognized it.“What is this?” I asked.“You know what it is,” he said.I shrugged. “Nope, sorry.”I could see that he was both hurt and angry. “Okay, then. You don’t remember it. I’ll remind you. I boughtyou that necklace for your birthday.”My birthday.It had to have been for my sixteenth birthday. It was the only year he ever forgot to buy me a birthdaypresent—the last summer we’d all been together at the beach house, when Susannah was still alive.”

“I stared at him. Did he really say that? Did he remember? The way he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised, I knew he did. And this time, I was the one to look away.Because I remembered. I remembered everything.”

“He acted like he didn't hear me. "He will let you down, because that's what he does. That's who he is." For the rest of my life, I was going to remember those words. Everything Jeremiah said to me that day, our wedding day, I would remember. I would remember the words Jeremiah said and the way he looked at me with them. With pity, and with bitterness. I hated myself for being the one who made him bitter, because that was one thing he'd never been. I reached up and laid my palm on his cheek. He could have pushed my hand away, he could have recoiled at my touch. He didn't. Just that one tiny thing told me what I needed to know - that Jere was still Jere and nothing could ever change that.”

“I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn’t a liar. I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That’s what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I’d pick. When I thought back to the look on her face—the way it just crumpled, how she’d sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing—it killed me. God, if I could, I’d go back to that moment and say all the right things, I’d tell her I loved her, I’d make it so that she never look that way again.”

“He didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity-Belly Conklin-”